The Open High School (1 Viewer)

[sworntosecrecy]

Hi everyone,
I was wondering if anyone has completed a language course through the Open High School, and was wondering how they go about teaching the language. I might have to do my Japanese Continuers through them, so I was just looking for anyone with genuine feedback.

Thanks

 

[uniform]

I did Spanish through the OHS in year 11, but i suppose it would be the same teaching style (?). Well first of all, you have a coordinator at school who corresponds between your OHS teacher and you, i.e., gives you all the materials each week, and you give him/her your homework each week to send in. Every week you have a mini textbook/booklet to work through, with a cassette tape to follow along with for pronunciation purposes. You write your homework answers on loose sheets of paper, which you then stick to a 'cover page', then give to your coordinator at the end of each week so he can send it in. Each week you receive details of the work that has to be handed in the following week, and also corrections of the work you did the week before. I also had fortnightly telephone lessons to practise dialogue. Every term you travel to the OHS to meet with your class and teacher in person to have a 'normal' lesson. I don't remember having any assessments during the year, only an end-of-year examination. All in all, very laid back teaching style from OHS, so you have to teach yourself, really. I found that the work that had to be completed each week, I could do within one school period - it isn't much homework.

 

[bleu]

Hey, i do french through the OHS.

Here is a link to another BOS thread that talks about the OHS:

http://community.boredofstudies.org/55/french/154375/stage-5-open-high-school-french.html

i suggest you try it. It should be useful. And there are plenty of other threads in the Languages forum. Go to that, click on 'search forum' and type in 'Open High School'. You should come up with quite a few useful threads!!

bonne chance :wave:

 

[yosemite sam]

I did italian beginners for my hsc through the open high school and my friend did french continuers. We both had a HUGE amount of difficulty learning the languages this way because of the distance and the general difficulties learning a language this way poses. I had a number of issues that i really think you should consider before taking on a subject this way, especially if it for your hsc.
1. They only do assessments twice a year because it is too difficult to organise any other way. This meant my assessments were weighted at 40% and 60% allowing a huge margin for failure if you stuff up.
2. The work level is considered to be a lot harder than if you learnt it in a normal classroom situation and because you are forced to learn pretty much on your own it can be very difficult to get your head around certain concepts especially grammar.
3. You have limited contact with your teacher. We both had a scheduled phone lesson each week but because the teachers have about 20 other students each then they dont have a great deal of time to work with you one on one on the phone. If i had to call to ask a question, which my teacher encouraged me to do, I would often be interrupting some one elses phone lesson and therefore feel bad and only be given a brief answer becuase i was interrupting. Email sort of solves this problem but can take a while to be answered.
4. You dont have anyone to learn with and bounce ideas off or anything like that. I was the only italian student within a 300km radius of where i live and had to pay a tutor just so that i could speak to someone and familiarise myself with the language more.
5. Open high school marks really hard. They deduct marks where you cant see why they have. My assessment mark was recorded as a 63 - far below what i wanted, but scaled up to a 76 for my final hsc result of 80. While this turned out ok in the end, i was convinced i wasnt going to get the results i needed for what i wanted. My friends french marks on the other hand didnt scale up at all and she ended up with 58.

So while i enjoy having knowledge of the italian language now, it was easily the most difficult thing i have ever done. I felt alone, isolated and unsupported and my school didnt acknowledge that i was doing a subject. The resources you are provided with are limited and I only saw my teacher three times in the two years i studied with her becuase i couldnt go to face to face lessons. My friend never met her teacher. If you really want to do the language and are up for the challenge then i would say go for it but remember that you should have a really keen interest in it so you dont become dissillusioned by the system and i would also recommend taking it as your 6th subject so that if a situation like mine and my firends occurs then you have back up subjects to fix your uai.
Obviously other people have differing opinions of OHS and i jsut thought id share my viewpoint for you to consider.

 

[sworntosecrecy]

Hmmm, I'm kind of worried a bit now, i thought that it would be a pretty good idea doing it throught the Open High School, since the results they get are brilliant. I plan to take extension in Year 12, so i'll have to work pretty hard I guess huh?

Well thanks to all who have replied. It all helps.

 

[nandayo]

I did Preliminary Italian Beginners through OHS last year. I started HSC Japanese Extension through OHS last term, and obviously I'm following that through this year.

I managed to get 94 with Italian Beginners, and found it a relatively easy course (although I can't compare this to yosemitesam as I haven't done the HSC course in its entirety). The main thing was motivation! This is the key to any language, whether you are studying it by yourself, via. distance, at school or anywhere.

What you have to ask yourself is are you motivated to do Japanese through OHS? If you are - then go for it! Remember nobody is there to push you to do your work, you could slip weeks behind if you lose motivation completely. Make sure you're doing Japanese through OHS because you enjoy the language and can't study it at your own school. If you're iffy about it, you might want to reconsider.

From what I've been told (and experienced from last term) the Japanese Department at OHS is very reliable and organized in comparison to other departments. So I don't think there's reason to worry about that.

My advice is - if you're motivated, that's all that matters. Ganbatte yo!

 

[James747]

Doing Jap Beg HSC right now through OHS.
Lovin it... my fav course by far... as already said, if u hav a genuine love to learning a language, ull get motivated and do well.

 

[angelix]

i`m doing italian beginners for my hsc through open highschool.
once a term, we go to the actual Open High in Randwick and have a lesson. but i must admit, it is really really boring. you dont do much.
it would be advisable if you learn a language with someone else you know. that way, you guys can help each other.
as for the assessments, the weighing is too much. and there isnt enough homework. i did another language at my school, and we got a worksheet a day. in open high, i did all my homework in one lesson. if you wish to do well thru open high, i suggest you do more homework yourself.

 

[Borbor]

I did italian beginners for my hsc through the open high school and my friend did french continuers. We both had a HUGE amount of difficulty learning the languages this way because of the distance and the general difficulties learning a language this way poses. I had a number of issues that i really think you should consider before taking on a subject this way, especially if it for your hsc.
1. They only do assessments twice a year because it is too difficult to organise any other way. This meant my assessments were weighted at 40% and 60% allowing a huge margin for failure if you stuff up.
2. The work level is considered to be a lot harder than if you learnt it in a normal classroom situation and because you are forced to learn pretty much on your own it can be very difficult to get your head around certain concepts especially grammar.
3. You have limited contact with your teacher. We both had a scheduled phone lesson each week but because the teachers have about 20 other students each then they dont have a great deal of time to work with you one on one on the phone. If i had to call to ask a question, which my teacher encouraged me to do, I would often be interrupting some one elses phone lesson and therefore feel bad and only be given a brief answer becuase i was interrupting. Email sort of solves this problem but can take a while to be answered.
4. You dont have anyone to learn with and bounce ideas off or anything like that. I was the only italian student within a 300km radius of where i live and had to pay a tutor just so that i could speak to someone and familiarise myself with the language more.
5. Open high school marks really hard. They deduct marks where you cant see why they have. My assessment mark was recorded as a 63 - far below what i wanted, but scaled up to a 76 for my final hsc result of 80. While this turned out ok in the end, i was convinced i wasnt going to get the results i needed for what i wanted. My friends french marks on the other hand didnt scale up at all and she ended up with 58.

So while i enjoy having knowledge of the italian language now, it was easily the most difficult thing i have ever done. I felt alone, isolated and unsupported and my school didnt acknowledge that i was doing a subject. The resources you are provided with are limited and I only saw my teacher three times in the two years i studied with her becuase i couldnt go to face to face lessons. My friend never met her teacher. If you really want to do the language and are up for the challenge then i would say go for it but remember that you should have a really keen interest in it so you dont become dissillusioned by the system and i would also recommend taking it as your 6th subject so that if a situation like mine and my firends occurs then you have back up subjects to fix your uai.
Obviously other people have differing opinions of OHS and i jsut thought id share my viewpoint for you to consider.

A bit late but I totally agree with everyone you said. I'm doing German Prelim through OHS and it's hell right now. It's very frustrating and annoying when you don't understand the content of the course but only have 10 minutes a fortnight with the teacher, by which you'd probably have forgotten.

I really hate the course at the moment and the content doesn't help either. It's so repetitive and boring - "write a letter to your an exchange student, write a letter to potential host family".

It doesn't help that half the people doing the course are of German background ==. I went to one of their school day things and we were split off into the "natives" and "non-natives". Most of the natives had lived in Germany for 8 years.

Like I said, I loathe the course at the moment and I'm seriously considering to drop it.

 

[letthesunrise]

Bah, Open High School. I'd drop the course I'm doing there right now, but I'm incredibly cheap and don't want to waste the $50 I paid to get in.

 

[Silph]

Hm, i've got a problem with my school.

Theres only 1 Japanese teacher, and 2 classes at the same line (this is for prelim).

he said if there are more beginners students than my continuers class, he will take that class.

If in the end, I don't get into continuers due to number of students, what should i do?

The last line has all the subjects i'd never do

 

[James747]

A bit late but I totally agree with everyone you said. I'm doing German Prelim through OHS and it's hell right now. It's very frustrating and annoying when you don't understand the content of the course but only have 10 minutes a fortnight with the teacher, by which you'd probably have forgotten.

I really hate the course at the moment and the content doesn't help either. It's so repetitive and boring - "write a letter to your an exchange student, write a letter to potential host family".

It doesn't help that half the people doing the course are of German background ==. I went to one of their school day things and we were split off into the "natives" and "non-natives". Most of the natives had lived in Germany for 8 years.

Like I said, I loathe the course at the moment and I'm seriously considering to drop it.

awww..... ur making me feel bad for telling u over and over again to do OHS... i dont think OHS is really that bad... my phone lessons use to go for 10 minutes or so too when i was in yr 11 too, but thats cuz i didnt want them to go any longer! xD Right now, doing the hsc course, my phone lessons easily reach 40 minutes... =P

 

[James747]

Hm, i've got a problem with my school.

Theres only 1 Japanese teacher, and 2 classes at the same line (this is for prelim).

he said if there are more beginners students than my continuers class, he will take that class.

If in the end, I don't get into continuers due to number of students, what should i do?

The last line has all the subjects i'd never do

Open high?

 

[nerdness]

i did prelim german this year @ OHS. let me warn you, if you really want to learn a language, don't choose german. im really sorry to the german ohs-ers. its a GREAT language to learn, BUT the way they handle things @ OHS, is just gonna become a burden upon you.

my first assessment was a comprehension? i sent it in, and got a phone call saying they hadn't received when both me and my supervisor knew we had sent it off. so then i had to redo the exam, which wasted my time. apparently, this happened before so im not really impressed.

and for me, & i know im not alone here, it takes up alot of your time. you have to call the teacher at least once or twice a week, and complete modules in a fortnight. and for my friends who did spanish through open high school for prelim, they got sent letters if they missed the deadline for modules.

okay, enough bad stuff. the only advantage i saw was that you were able to learn about the German culture. that's it.



=]

 

[James747]

OHS is really not that bad at all. Its a very organised school, everyone noes wut theyre doin. At least that is what I think of the people in Japanese. The teachers are all really nice and talented. Almost all of them mark HSC's or have before, and some write course books as well. Your OHS teacher is really like your private tutor too, the learning is very personal and you develop a very close relationship with your teacher as well (thats if you're bothered to call in the first place). You have no physical classes but, hey, that means free periods. Yes, you'll need to be self-motivated but how can u succeed in anything if you don't?

 

[vinvien]

wow, i haven't been back on this forum for a whole year.
anyways.
i did Indonesian Beginners with OHS. The class started with about 12-15 people in year 11 then dropped down to 5 students in year 12 haha.
Someone already posted in detail about how the OHS system works so i will just comment on my own experience then...
With my course i think my assesment marks were low 60ish but since there was only 5 people in my class doing it, being ranked third really wasn't so bad =P i know the students who were 1st and 2nd were always doing their work and always got marks in the 90s range. so there's this huge gap between the 3rd student and the 1st aye? luckily my results scaled and i got 85 for hsc !

The work itself wasn't hard because the materials they gave for studying were really helpful. I also knew a few Indonesian/Malaysian people so I had backup when my teachers werent available. I had one teacher assigned to me, but when she was busy we could contact the second teacher and if both of them were busy, they notified me via email telling me that when i call, there would be a substitute.

I was a pretty lazy student so there were times when my work was 1 - 2 weeks overdue. When it was really late, i scanned my homework papers and even mailed them half finished work. Then i emailed them the rest of my homework.

I've forgotten my Indonesian now but you can say it was one of the subjects that i managed to score high with without doing much work.

The teachers werent there in person to pressure you with work and you worked at your own pace.

oh btw, my teacher was one of the technical people at OHS as well so she managed to change our cassettes into CDS and i turned them into mp3 files to put in my mp3. Very convenient =) I would have to admit that the cassette quality was pretty crap.

 

[qwong92]

I do German Continuers and extension through open high.

Only advice I have is, if you aren't self disciplined, don't do it =)

I'm suffering from an overdose of procrastination, and it's gonna take a lot of work these holidays to catch up on 8 weeks of work which I have neglected. =O

 

[marcquelle]

i did japanese beginners in 2007 for prelim and most of year 12, they were good, and are really nice, mine even came to my school to do face to face lessons (Mrs. Deans) she was really good, but then i got a different tacher for year 12 and she would ring for a lesson when i was in the middle of english or maths, or would mail me the wrong work booklets, or in a few cases lose my tp, luckily me school registered that we sent them, so i never got in trouble, then i was given a 4th teacher and then i kust had to drop it cause it got so annoying. But otherwise i'd say just be motivated and be prepared to do lots of extra study, but it will be worth it.